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Home > What's New > Back from the Trade Show
Back from the Trade Show
Posted: Monday, August 02, 2004
By David Savona I've just returned from my tenth Retail Tobacco Dealers of America trade show with a briefcase full of cigars and a notebook full of information on the latest releases from the cigar makers who stock the best cigar shops in America. Over the weekend, I reflected on the change that's taken place over those years.
I smoked at least a box of cigars at my first trade show, in Orlando in 1995, and I remember being impressed with a few of them, having little opinion about most of them and being absolutely appalled by several. One, made in Honduras with a wrapper leaf that can only be described as Kermit green, with veins you would find on a grandma's leg, was one of the worst things I had ever puffed. The maker had grand plans to sell it for $10 a stick and enjoyed limited success before going out of business a couple of years later.
That was the cigar world of 1995, loaded with mediocre cigars selling for $8, $10, even $12. You know those days are long gone. Judging from the cigars of this RTDA in Las Vegas last week, times are better than ever.
I smoked a few dozen cigars last week at the trade show. A couple of them were OK. Most were very good. At least five were absolutely amazing. And I didn't smoke one that I could call awful.
Ernesto Perez-Carrillo has a new line of figurados. The one I smoked was balanced, elegant and rich, and I smoked it to the very end, something I rarely do at RTDA because I simply don't have the time and there are far too many cigars to smoke. Altadis's new Maria Guerrero has a similar body, rich but not overpowering, and it's absolutely lovely. It's made with Cameroon wrapper, a leaf the company rarely uses. A very expensive OneOff with a pigtail tip and an uncut foot also showed the balance and richness of the first two, with a powdery, cocoa flavor that was alluring. It was hard to put down. Padrón's 40th Anniversary Torpedo, one of the strongest Padróns I have smoked, was blossoming with richness, a real finger burner. And the Litto Gomez Diez -- perhaps the strongest cigar I smoked all week -- was a majestic flavor bomb from start to finish.
I couldn't smoke every cigar I was given -- yet -- so I don't have impressions of everyone's wares from the show. But it's clear from what I smoked, and from the impressions of my colleagues, that the standard of today's cigars is extraordinary. I think it's safe to say that the cigars on today's American market are better than they have been in any time since I joined the business.
You know there are great cigars out there right now, but let me tell you there's no shortage of phenomenal new cigars coming to market in September, October and beyond. Trust me. You're going to love them.
To get ratings and detailed news about the cigars of RTDA, go to Cigar Insider, the twice-monthly newsletter from Cigar Aficionado.
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